From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

Original Sin (Adam Dalgliesh, #9)

P.D. James

Start date: September 1, 2020

Finish date: September 30, 2020

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: Next in our Adam Dalgliesh challenge.
[close] Next in our Adam Dalgliesh challenge.

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Group Challenges

* 2026 Challenge
By Susan · 24 posts · 27 views

last updated Oct 17, 2025 02:23AM

* Oct 25: A Murder Is Announced (1950) by Agatha Christie
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last updated Oct 16, 2025 07:31AM

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What Members Thought

Sep 05, 2020 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is the ninth in the Adam Dalgliesh books and is one of my favourites, so far. This is probably helped by the fact it is set in a publishing firm – anything at all bookish and I am immediately on board. It also begins well, with young shorthand typist, Mandy Price, setting out for an interview at Peverell Press. The interview is interrupted by the discovery of a body, but, showing a degree of nonchalance which impressed me greatly, Mandy still agrees to take her typing test…

Sadly, the discov ...more

21 likes · Like · see review

Sep 05, 2020 Susan rated it really liked it

5 likes · Like · see review

Jul 23, 2015 AngryGreyCat rated it really liked it

Original Sin by P.D. James is book 9 in the Adam Dalgliesh series. This mystery involves an old-established publishing firm housed in a building more suitable for a museum called non-ironically Innocent House. The firm seems to be facing more than its fair share of death and mischievous pranks. Are the deaths and the pranks connected? Are the suicides really suicides? Are the deaths even connected to one another? There is a complicated cast of characters each with their own desperate tales, loss ...more

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Jul 25, 2021 Cathy Beyers rated it really liked it

After my first rereading of one of P.D. James's novels I decided to continue because I derived extraordinary pleasure from it. Since I read all of these novels along time ago, especially the first half of the series, I have little recollection of the plots, apart from the fact that I thought them ingenious at the time. I was in my early twenties when I read these and recollect some older person telling me that when you reread a book at a later stage in your life, it is never the same book. Even ...more

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Aug 29, 2020 Jill rated it really liked it

Shelves: p-d-james

I really liked this book, as I felt it was so much better than the last couple in the series. Although James had written in her very detailed way, which got me down in the previous books, this one wasn't so bad. It centered more on Dalgliesh's staff rather than him, and we did have to go all through the back stories of their lives. The guilty feelings of a non practicing Jew complaining about the treatment of the Jews in the force, but then the women's treatment really no better. The Jewish side ...more

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Sep 26, 2020 Tracey rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pd-james

I liked Mandy, I liked the publishing house, I liked the setting by the Thames, I liked getting to know Daniel. Hissing Sid gave a rare bit of a comedic touch to a PD James novel. But the ending was awful. And it was far too long.

Really it's a 2.5 stars, rounded up. ...more

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Sep 07, 2020 Sandy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-classic, mystery-detective-grp, zjames-challenge-2020, rread-2020

This was moving along, all be it slowly, towards a four star read until I came to the very disappointing ending. Excellent descriptions of an imitation Venetian palace on the banks of the Thames and interesting secondary characters, but too many words overall. James can breathe life into her characters so it must be a choice to have Dalglish, and now his second in command, so very stiff.

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